Fallout from new Kindle line

[MV64]

That sounds about right, virtually every industry and product is condensing down to three major companies giving everyone a "choice."

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Amazon's push is impressive. But let's not forget that everything in that push is iterative, not innovative.
Kindle 4= last year's Kobo Reader Wireless
Kindle Touch= this year's Kobo Touch
Kindle Fire= Nook Color from last year
Amazon App Store... well, you get the point.

The really innovative thing that Amazon has done is Special Offers (IOW, ad-supported versions of e book readers). Lot of folks HATED the idea when it was first introduced, but the public embraced-to such an extent that it is the "Special Offers " version that is the default , while the no-ads version has become the alternative. It is the "Special Offers" version that is responsible for those eye-popping price points. For example, the no ads version of the KF is $239- just 10 bucks less than the NC at $249. That's not the price being repeated endlessly, though -its the "magical" $199 for the KFSO.
Can the "technical " innovators- B&N and Kobo- counter this? Hard to see how.
The end game-Apple buys B&N, sells off the unprofitable B&M stores,
turns the rest into Apple Stores, and merges the digital division into iBooks. Google absorbs Kobobooks. In five years there will be only three ebookstores- Amazon, Apple, Google

Where did you get the idea the Kindle Fire has a Special Offers price and non SO price? There is no indication of that anywhere I have seen.

[HarryT]

There is no "special offers" version of the Fire. Stonetools is mistaken.

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There is no "special offers" version of the Fire. Stonetools is mistaken.

Appears the "magical" price has more to it than indicated.

[fjtorres]

Let's see:
Amazon just matched the better features of their competitors (touchscreen, bundled non-english dicts, multi-language gui, library ebooks, color lcd model--although the Fire isn't a reader nor is it locked down like the NC, but still...) and it is merely "iterative" (sic)?

When are those "technical leader" competitors going to "iterate" or imitate some cloud-based features, commercial audio ebooks, tts, real page numbers, 3g, etc?

Come on guys, let's be serious!
I'm not likely to be buying any one of those new Kindles, not do I own Amazon stock, but I'm not going to pretend that Amazon didn't just match their competitors' most prominent features and differentiators, while those same competitors have yet to match Kindle's signature features from years past.
And that's without bringing up the Special Offers.

If Amazon is copying competitors' signature features it is because they are fierce competitors unwilling to yield an inch, with a poker player's mentality. ("I'll see your touchscreen and raise you cloud archival of personal documents and x-ray indexing of ebooks. Your move.") That is a plus, not a minus.

Amazon is a deadly competitor, don't help them out by underestimating *their* technical prowess.

Edit: Fanboyism and misinformation helps nobody; active, vigorous competition helps everybody.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by RDaneel54

Where did you get the idea the Kindle Fire has a Special Offers price and non SO price? There is no indication of that anywhere I have seen.

Damn it! I Read that somewhere , I thought. My bad. Even with that, my argument still stands. I never said that Amazon was never innovative , btw. I said that the CURRENT push was iterative.

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Damn it! I Read that somewhere , I thought. My bad. Even with that, my argument still stands. I never said that Amazon was never innovative , btw. I said that the CURRENT push was iterative.

I understand. In these early days after the debut of the new devices there is probably a lot of misinformation out there.

[OtterBooks]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Damn it! I Read that somewhere , I thought. My bad. Even with that, my argument still stands. I never said that Amazon was never innovative , btw. I said that the CURRENT push was iterative.

I think if you look at the products (and service) as a whole, there is quite a bit of innovation. The price:hardware ratio, the level of OS customization, additions such as Xray and Silk (to a degree).. There is as much leading as following going on with this push. Most good products are a blend of both.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's rather fortunate for you that the "special offers" Kindles aren't available outside the US, in that case .

Yeah - I was thinking about that afterwards, mainly because I was wondering if I should reverse that position. Then I remembered that KSO hasn't previously been available outside of U.S. and probably won't be going forward.

So I would think it would be quite a bit less frustrating for me to stick to my moral high ground and continue to say "NO!" to ads.

I am quite interested in the touch edition though. Just to reduce the dimensions again without impacting reading area seems like a reasonable plus to me. I wonder how long it will take until it makes a trip out here to Australia. I would probably use my current K3 as a loaner Kindle for my mother. She refuses to own a Kindle, so I can just put some of the books I want her to read on my K3 and give it to her. She doesn't own a Kindle then.

[taming]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Nope - that's a difference between British and American English. In British English, punctuation only goes inside a quote if it forms a part of the quote.

That was also true in the US when I went to university. Nice article here that explains how this is handled now in North America (you may be surprised). The link is to the writing centre at the University of Ottawa.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by taming

That was also true in the US when I went to university. Nice article here that explains how this is handled now in North America (you may be surprised). The link is to the writing centre at the University of Ottawa.

Yes, the main difference is where commas and full stops (periods) go. In British usage, they're normally placed outside the quote; in American usage, inside.

This is what Wiki has to say on the matter:

With regard to quotation marks adjacent to periods and commas, there are two styles of punctuation in widespread use. While these two styles are most commonly referred to as American and British (and some style sheets provide no other name), some American writers and organizations use the British style and vice versa. Both systems have the same rules regarding question marks, exclamation points, colons and semicolons. They differ on the treatment of periods and commas.

In the U.S., the standard style is called American style, typesetters’ rules, printers’ rules, typographical usage, or traditional punctuation, whereby commas and periods are almost always placed inside closing quotation marks.[10] This style of punctuation is common in the U.S. and Canada, and is mandated by the Chicago Manual of Style and other American style guides. The other standard style—called British style or logical punctuation[11]—is to include within quotation marks only those punctuation marks that appeared in the quoted material, but otherwise to place punctuation outside the closing quotation marks.[12] Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage provides a good example of the British-style rule: "All signs of punctuation used with words in quotation marks must be placed according to the sense."[13]

Examples

When dealing with words-as-words, short-form works and sentence fragments, the styles differ:

“Carefree,” in general, means “free from care or anxiety.” (American practice)
“Carefree”, in general, means “free from care or anxiety”. (British practice)

When dealing with direct speech, American rules place periods and commas inside the quotation marks all the time, but the alternative usage varies. In fiction, both styles are the same.[14] In non-fiction, British publishers may permit placing punctuation that is not part of the person’s speech inside the quotation marks but prefer that it be placed outside.[14] According to the Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Copy-editors and Proofreaders, periods and commas that are part of the person’s speech are permitted inside the quotation marks regardless.[14]

“Today,” said Cinderella, “I feel free from care and anxiety.” (both major styles)
“Today”, said former Prime Minister Tony Blair, “I feel free from care and anxiety.” (British non-fiction only)
“I feel happy,” said Björk, “carefree, and well.” (both major styles)

[Grimm]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Let's see:
Amazon just matched the better features of their competitors (touchscreen, bundled non-english dicts, multi-language gui, library ebooks, color lcd model--although the Fire isn't a reader nor is it locked down like the NC, but still...) and it is merely "iterative" (sic)?

When are those "technical leader" competitors going to "iterate" or imitate some cloud-based features, commercial audio ebooks, tts, real page numbers, 3g, etc?

Come on guys, let's be serious!
I'm not likely to be buying any one of those new Kindles, not do I own Amazon stock, but I'm not going to pretend that Amazon didn't just match their competitors' most prominent features and differentiators, while those same competitors have yet to match Kindle's signature features from years past.
And that's without bringing up the Special Offers.

If Amazon is copying competitors' signature features it is because they are fierce competitors unwilling to yield an inch, with a poker player's mentality. ("I'll see your touchscreen and raise you cloud archival of personal documents and x-ray indexing of ebooks. Your move.") That is a plus, not a minus.

Amazon is a deadly competitor, don't help them out by underestimating *their* technical prowess.

Edit: Fanboyism and misinformation helps nobody; active, vigorous competition helps everybody.

It's hardly "fanboyism" to point out that Kobo and BN had e-ink touchscreen readers before Amazon and that at least in the case of the BN device you have SD slot support. And before you extoll the virtues of the cloud, some people prefer physical media. That said, the new Kindle family offerings while very cool, are not innovative.

[ProfCrash]

And Sony had a touchscreen before Nook and Kobo.

Who cares?

Sony had an e-ink reader before Amazon. Amazon had one before Nook. Nook had one before Kobo. WOOHOOO

The only people who are about all of that are the people who spend time on bulletin boards posting about these silly things. Come Christmas time, few people are going to go "Well, I can buy a Kindle with WiFi for $99 or a Nook with WiFi for $139 but the Nook touchscreen came first so I'll buy the Nook. Oh wait, Sony came before Nook so I'll by the TS-1!"

I think the same person looking to buy a $79 or $99 Kindle is going to be ok with 3,500 or 2,000 books saved on the device without a SD slot.

Heck, I had an SD slot on my K1 and never used it and that only held 300 books.

[carld]

I thought I'd miss the SD card slot when I moved from a K1 to a K3, but I really haven't.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by carld

I thought I'd miss the SD card slot when I moved from a K1 to a K3, but I really haven't.

The K3 does have 16x as much storage space as the K1. That's probably part of the reason why .